Strategies for Internet citizens

Tech’s inequality paradox

Travelers leaving from the San Francisco airport on morning flights know the drill: you stay over the night before at a motel on El Camino Real in San Bruno. Last week I booked the Super 8 which turns out to be perfectly serviceable. As a bonus, it’s right next door to Don Pico’s Mexican Bistro and Cevicheria which is unlike anything else you’ll find on motel row:

The back bar in the new dining room is a 1925 mahogany Brunswick from the Cliff House in San Francisco; the large bullfight mural is an original painting by Roberto Leroy Smith; large mirrors came from Harry Denton’s; the chandeliers are of Austrian crystal, from the World Trade Center at the San Francisco Ferry Building; the trophy fish are from Bing Crosby’s private collection; the large elephant, floral, and deer paintings are from the movie Citizen Kane with Orson Welles; the sombreros are 1920s antiques from a Mexican hat collection acquired from Universal Studios; and the stylized modern art paintings are by California painter Rudy Hess. – http://www.donpicosbistro.com/history/

It was too late for dinner but I sat at the mahogany bar, had a drink and a snack, and talked with Angel, the bartender. He’s a veteran of San Francisco’s culture war. Born and raised in the Mission District, he was driven out seven years ago. At most he could afford a studio apartment and that was no place to raise a young child.

Angel didn’t express the anger that you can now see bubbling to the surface when you walk the streets of San Francisco. Just the sadness of the dispossessed. We talked about many things. At one point he answered a text on his iPhone and it suddenly hit me. That’s the same iPhone that San Francisco’s tech elite carry.

For most things you can buy, there’s almost no limit to what you can spend. A tech billionaire in San Francisco can own a home or a car that costs hundreds of times what Angel can pay for a home or a car. But while it’s possible to buy a gold-plated and diamond-encrusted iPhone, I’ve never seen one. The tech that’s at the heart of San Francisco’s crisis of inequality is a commodity, not a luxury good. It’s a great equalizer. Everybody has a smartphone, everybody has access to the services it provides. But if you’re Angel, you can’t use that phone in the neighborhood you grew up in.

This is why I’ve always admired and respected your outlook on life. You always get to the deeper issues, the deeper connections, and everyone you meet is worthy of your attention and concern, regardless of the “normal” delineations of gender, class, race, religion or pay scale.